No corporation is so well off that they can’t come up with new ways to improve their cash flow.
My husband is a very 20th century man. I had just convinced him that it was perfectly safe to order goods online with a large reputable company such as Amazon. As he tells it, I misled him into having “his pocket picked”. My credibility in his eyes, as far as online matters is concerned, is irreparably damaged.
Back in November, my husband’s bank account took a $99 hit for Amazon Prime membership. He had not ordered it. He did not even know what it was. He found a customer service phone number and used familiar 20th century technology to call them. They apologized and removed the charge.
Flash forward to January when I get a call from my credit union’s fraud department. They called me when a similar charge was entered on my account and a few days before it was actually posted. When I talked to someone at the credit union, I was told that I should call them and, if they refused to rescind the charge, then I could fill out a fraud form.
When the charge appeared on my account, I called Amazon. The customer service agent reimbursed my card. She explained the charge this way: I had taken the one-month trial prime membership (I had not) and, when the free month was up, they automatically charged me for the second month. (We rarely order online, preferring to support our local economy so we have no use for a prime membership.) At my request, I was passed to a supervisor. I mentioned that this mistake had happened twice to us. I mentioned the fraud department alert. She promised to forward this to the billing department and that it would never happen again, to us or any other customer.
Perhaps it was an honest mistake or at least a billing error. To Amazon's credit, there was no problem with the reimbursement and no sales pitch about the benefits of the prime membership. Once I called them, the problem was taken care of immediately with courtesy.
However, it happened to both of us with separate accounts and computers. I'd never received notice from them when the charge was made. Frankly, the credit union fraud call disquieted me to say the least. I am curious if anyone else has had this problem.
I am passing this along in the event that people may not notice a similar charge. In our bank accounts, it is very noticeable but may not be in everyone’s.
I am never storing my card information online again. Never.
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Great pertinent information we could all use with a Big Hat Tip to Grubber:If it's not a card you use on Amazon (1+ / 0-)
It may be a fraudster testing your card info. Signing up for a 'free trial' is a common way to test if a card number is valid and the account is active. I work with debit cards and we see Amazon Prime disputes all the time. Many are self-inflicted, but in a large number of cases it is clearly not the cardholder's doing.
If carders have actual cards to test, Redbox is the volume leader.
And everybody should stop what they are doing and file their taxes ASAP so a fraudster doesn't file some made up income numbers with your SSN to get a refund. The Anthem breach announced today has made many millions of additional SSN available, and it's not like they were hard to get before.
I recommend krebsonsecurity.com as a great blog to learn about the card fraud industry and other security matters. Here's a post on the tax problem.
"It's the (expletive) 21st century man. Get over it." - David Ortiz
by grubber